Now let’s say that Banksy caught Villains Vault displaying and selling unlicensed Banksy reprints as well as stuff from other street artists, you know, flagrantly, back in 2010. So then Banksy was all enough is enough, so he was all THIS IS WHERE I DRAW THE LINE.

And then he drew the line.

So really, the line is the piece, instead of the rat, right?

So if you just have the rat, you’re missing part of the story, right?

So it’s not just The Rat In The Hat Comes Back, right? I’m not saying that Banksy is all that deep but he’s deeper than a simple put-a-beret-on-it.

Now I understand why that KRON guy just went for the rat, but to do this job “as close as you could get to the intention Banksy had,” you’d have gotten the rest of the piece.

“The original Haight Street Rat stencil is a beret-wearing rat clutching a marker and a red line that extends from the rat to the neighboring building on the corner of Haight Street and Belvedere Street. On the adjacent building, the rat has seemingly written the text “THIS IS WHERE I DRAW THE LINE” in red which can be seen from the street above a clothing store that allegedly took street artists’ works and printed them on T-shirts and other apparel for sale without giving the artists any credit or revenue.”

“Named the Haight Street Rat for its placement atop a Victorian building on Haight Street, the stenciled rat clutching a red marker is now neatly framed and displayed in a location entirely unlike the one in which it was created: the lobby of the U.S. Bank Tower in downtown L.A., the city’s tallest tower and perhaps its most conspicuous symbol of capitalism. It’s a baffling venue for a piece of site-specific street art that initially wrapped across two buildings…

And here’s a little history, complete with an artist’s conception of what the anti-graffiti fence would look like – keep reading down, through the webpages of time.

You know, fundamentally, this is the big landmark at the gateway to Golden Gate Park. I don’t like the fence idea but I also don’t like people coming by to see giant KKK letters on the base of this statue for days, weeks and months. And the Rec and Parks and Arts Commission people say it’s a real expensive PITA to keep the graffiti off.

It would take me a long time to find this billboard again, as I rely on street signs to tell me which Avenue I’m on* after I’ve crossed the city limits and entered SF County. (Anyway, it’s near this place – but is it the Inner Richmond or the Middle Richmond? I just can’t tell.)

I sense a little friction.

“I beg of you, Monsieur, watch yourself. Be on guard. This place is full of hipsters, hipsters everywhere, everywhere.” –The Dark European

*I suppose there are people out there that you could blindfold and then release at some random place in the Richmond District and then they’d know their exact location based upon sounds, wind patterns, smells, etc. You know, ppl with Local Knowledge. I’m not one of those people (even though I was very close to being redistricted into District One a few years back, oh well).

[UPDATE: A Berkeley resident who’s practically become a member of the Willie Brown / Ed Lee administration in San Francisco calls the Tenderloin the “Uptown Tenderloin” for some reason. Check it out here.]

Bro was fast – too fast for me.

But rest assured he was the one who scribbled the white markings on this drainpipe in the 94102:

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What does it mean? What message does this misunderstood urban street yoot mean to convey?